Nannies aren't a parliamentary perk. But childcare is a priority

It has been a rich and greedy week for the Conservatives, much to David Cameron's discomfort. First, MEP Giles Chichester, appointed as an enforcer of fair play, is revealed as a fiddler on the hoof. Then Den Dover, the Brussels Whip, admits to paying more than £750,000 of public money to his wife and daughter, and is astonishingly acting within the European Parliament regulations. Now, party chairman Caroline Spelman, who is in charge of cleaning up Tory MPs parliamentary perks, has admitted that, 10 years ago, she recompensed her children's former nanny from expenses funded by the taxpayer.

Once could be seen as one man's avarice: three times in a matter of days, with the memory of Derek Conway's 'salary' of £40,000 to his son still very much alive, and it begins to look like an unsavoury seam of 'Loadsamoney' Conservative parliamentary activity. (Balanced, of course, by the Blairs' dedicated and unseemly dash to accumulate dosh).

All of which probably confirms to the 'ordinary' voter earning only a fraction of what Mr Dover allegedly spent on 'motoring expenses' (£56,400) that, while every MP vows that he or she is intent on making a difference, the only change that really appears to matter is to their bank balance .

It's not as if they don't earn enough. Spelman's basic pay is £61,820 plus allowances. From 1997 to 1998, she says she paid her nanny, Tina Haynes, to act as her 'constituency secretary'. Haynes told the BBC that she had carried out almost no secretarial work, other than answering the phone 'once or twice a week'. Now Spelman is facing a parliamentary inquiry.

The precise details of whether or not Haynes did manage to type with one hand while rocking the cradle with the other have yet to emerge, but what is clear is that, such is the nature of the gender wars, Spelman is likely to get clobbered on several more fronts than the 'whoops-a-daisy' moments of Chichester and Dover .

Parents across the land struggling to meet childcare costs out of taxed income would just love to stick the nursery fees down on expenses (a nanny's salary is a Rolls Royce service confined to the very affluent). The childcare element of the working tax credit - a legitimate contribution from taxpayers' money - is a measly £48.45 per week, while, it costs more than £8,000 a year to keep a child in nursery - and fees are rising at four per cent a year.

At the same time as Haynes was or was not doubling up as Spelman's nanny/secretary, Gordon Brown was promising a national childcare strategy that would deliver affordable, accessible, high quality care to all. Ten years on, that's one more promise he has failed to keep.

Whatever the outcome of Spelgate, among her critics there might also exist just a touch of ambivalence. It's a bit rum that in a profession awash with allowances, including the cost of staying away from home, office expenses and a London supplement, there's no allowance for the one job that should matter as much if not more: someone to care for the children.